One
by AidenSeamus
Summary: Will and two others have survived the initial outbreak. With nothing left, the group leaves Vermont and heads to Georgia on a rumor that there is help. Set in season 2.
1. Chapter 1 Oddity

disclaimer- I don't own any characters or anything you recognize from TWD. I also picture Will being played by Benedict Cumberbatch (who i obviously don't own either).

* * *

A rough sigh escaped William's lips as he brought down another walker. They needed to move again and, by the looks of it, it would need to be sooner as opposed to later. He growled in frustration and cracked his neck as he pulled his sniper rifle out of the broken window. His right hand quickly fanned through his somewhat greasy brown hair. He was worn out.

Will stepped back from the window and turned to the rest of his three "man" group. One woman in her twenties and a nine year old boy smiled weakly back at him. He couldn't break now.

_They __**need**__ me._

He nodded to the boy who shuffled to the other side of the room and slung a green LL Bean backpack over his shoulders. Both of his small chapped hands grasped the plastic handle of a large Radio Flyer wagon full of medicine and ammo. William watched as a small knife holder slapped against the boy's right leg while he walked to the bare doorway.

William's blue eyes returned to the woman. Even though they had lived together before the outbreak, he still had a hard time keeping his eyes off of her. And not in the good way.

His eyes focused on her blonde mohawk that he had helped her shave down earlier in the day, almost to her scalp. Her chocolate eyes watered slightly as she picked up on his rising level of panic. Somehow, she always knew what was going on around her and in his head even though she couldn't speak.

William glanced over his shoulder to keep a tally on the number of Stiffs outside. He huffed and offered her his hand. He tensed for a few brief seconds as his eyes traveled to the one injury he had never learned to ignore; her missing left arm. Pure unbridled rage would pulse through his veins each time and, even now, it flowed freely.

She smiled up at him softly and brought his hand closer to her face. His free hand shook as she mouthed the words "Thank you" onto the back of his hand. She did this at least once a day and would each time he stopped to help her in any way. It was an unuttered reminder that he could've left her back in northern Vermont underneath ten feet of snow.

The little boy cleared his throat and the blonde blushed as she gently dropped Will's hand. She would be able to relax once they had moved out of their current hiding spot.

Will waited until she had her small pistol in her hand and inhaled as he shoved the plain white door open. He mouthed a silent prayer of protection as he upholstered the Colt on his hip.

* * *

His prayer for protection was answered but the one he'd made the day they'd left Lyndonville did not. The Atlanta CDC was a bust and now… he had no idea where to go. Will's mouth wavered as sat across from the blonde. Her lone arm wrapped around the boy.

"Suzie," He whispered so the boy could get some rest, "I'm sorry." A staggered breath escaped his lips, "I'm sorry I was wrong about the CDC."

Suzie smiled and shook her head in a manner that he'd learned meant "Don't worry about it."

"What about the boy?" William pointed at the stunted boy that had shifted in her arm, "Did he choose a name yet?"

Suzie grinned but shook her head no, "Not as far as I know." She bit her lip after her mouth formed the W in "know".

Her eye lids drooped a few moments later and William allowed her to nod off. He kneeled beside her and draped their only blanket over her shoulders.

He had managed to find a Ford Fusion with the keys still inside for Suzie to drive while he drove behind in his Land Rover and attached trailer. It was hard for her to drive at first and he had ended up fabricating a suicide knob for her to steer with.

Will chuckled lightly as he scanned the area of the highway shoulder they pulled off on. He had parked the Land Rover sideways to provide them with some cover to start a fire. The Stiffs were attracted to the soft glow of fire.

He picked up the small can of food they had cooked for dinner and finished off what little was left. He felt far less guilty about it than usual… he hadn't eaten in days. He glanced down at the boy in Suzie's arms as he stirred in his sleep. He could remember the day the little tike had pointed a gun in his face outside of Lake George, New York. Will had never blamed him for the shot he'd fired at him. The boy had just lost his family and kept the bodies close to him. He had no idea that they would turn into a Stiff afterwards.

A walker groaned in the distance and it cut Will's memory short. His exceptionally blue eyes narrowed as he scanned the area around the cars and the trailer for a threat. With all of the abandoned cars on the highway, he surmised after several moments that he wouldn't be able to see if a Stiff had made it into camp until it was almost too late.

The boy shifted and slowly crawled to Will. He knelt down and picked the boy up in his arms and they both tried to scan for intruders.

"Tyr." He whispered as he aimed his small gun at a shadow behind two abandoned cars. "I decided on Tyr."

Will smirked and chuckled lowly. Suzie had brought up the idea for the boy to change his name. He never could tell them his real name. it hurt him far too much for a nine year old. "Alright. Tyr it is."


	2. Chapter 2 Going Back

**Disclaimer- I don't own any TWD characters you recognize and I forgot to mention Will looks like Benedict in Star Trek. (I also don't own STID either)**

**NOTE: this is a replacement for the original chapter 2 that is now chapter 3! it also contains some triggering material. **

* * *

It was hard for me at first. I had been transferred out of St. Johnsberry hospital to UMass with my arm removed from the elbow down. I couldn't get into therapy to be equipped with a prosthetic arm and I would often growl with discontent at my many failures.

I had been angry at first but I knew him. I knew the boy who did this to me.

We had been lulled into the usual safety. All of the members of my neighborhood believed the lie that one of their own children could do such a thing. I could.

David Miller had been hurting for a long… _long_ time.

His family life, at a glance, seemed to be the "All American family" but I saw past the façade. He had been raised with an iron fist and more than his fair share of blame on things he couldn't control. Things in a range from his father losing his job to his mother's miscarriage that had been the "family secret". He would have been the first in the family to go to a four year college his father beat the idea into him and it didn't take long before his grades far surpassed anyone in our entire class. The whole school bullied him and I had to break up far too many fights to count.

But I remember that day clearly. He wasn't my friend David. He was not the boy who had saved me from drowning in the Connecticut River when I was seven or the one who taught me how to shoot for the first time. He was a _monster_…. a monster wearing my best friend's face.

It was our first day back and the snow had just cleared from one of the many powerful Vermont winter storms. He seemed different and I couldn't put my finger on it. His green eyes had dulled and his sweatshirt hood had been pulled over his bleach blonde hair. He stood up straight against the main door frame just watching the students flood in.

He was silent for the first two classes and never removed his sweatshirt. Ten thirty came and we both went outside for a smoke break. (of course his parents didn't know about that..) He flicked the last of the ashes onto the ground and stomped it out.

"Wait out here for me, Suzie." His voice shook and I nodded. It was confusing and I was constantly wondering what was wrong.

The first shot rang out and I did not hesitate.

* * *

I showed open the fire door and screamed out for people to come to me. Several trash bins and a rock from the play yard propped open the door as students and faculty poured past me. I rushed inside; dodging several teachers' outstretched arms before I came to the second floor hallway.

David stood at the end of the hall with a silenced pistol and a hatchet in his left hand. He turned and frowned once he spotted me but said nothing. He shoved a body across the floor with his tennis shoe and it squeaked and squealed as the blood stained the freshly waxed tile floors.

I couldn't breathe, never mind scream out as he lifted the pistol towards me. Three shots rang out and a strange burn started across my shoulder and legs. I continued to stand from the fear that he would carry on his rampage until everyone left inside was dead.

We stared at each other in silence for several moments until I finally managed to reach across the hall and pull the fire alarm. He shook his head and charged down the hallway and switched the hatchet to his right hand.

I felt it go through my left arm above my elbow and he smirked as he shoved me down to the floor. On reflex I raised both of my arms up to block the incoming blow to my throat he seemed to be planning to do next.

But his trajectory changed as I turned my head to the left. I had planned to scream until the top tip of the hatchet met right edge of my mouth and tore through my cheek until it reached the edge of my skull. It continued on through my long blonde hair and smashed into the floor with a metallic clang.

Before I could process the pain, David hastily lifted the hatchet back above his head and tried to bring it back down against my throat for the second time. There is no doubt in my mind that David was trying to decapitate me and would have succeeded if he hadn't been shot to death above me by the State police.

As my eyes closed, his widened as he looked down at me. My David came back in that moment and I can never unsee it.

* * *

I met Will at St. Johnsberry three years before the Global Outbreak and many months after the shooting. He had the bed closest to the door and was brought in after the rest of my arm was amputated due to an infection in my stitches. He coughed and threw up constantly for three days as he underwent chemotherapy for lung cancer.

For some reason, he had adamantly requested to be the next person to fill the empty bed. Adam Maxton had the bed before him. He'd gone home after he fully recovered from being hit by a drunk driver.

Will was ex- Army and had flown home with his troop a few weeks before he was admitted to the hospital. He chuckled sadly when I mentioned I used to smoke and shook his head.

"It's a good thing you quit." His voice was gargled and he threw up for five minutes afterward. Neither of us expected him to make it through the night.

But he did. He got better faster than I did and I had been in the hospital for months before he was admitted. Tough bastard.

Even as his brown hair grew back in, he kept it in a buzz cut. I laughed for the first time since my re admission because of the reason. If he didn't cut it back, it would curl and his father's voice would pop into his head with the comment of "Dirty hippy hair".

It shocked me. I hadn't spoken, laughed or cried out since the shooting. I believed the doctors called it selective mutism due to a tragic event. It was the turning point for everyone that knew us. I had grown very close to Will and he had gradually warmed up to me. I was seventeen and he was twenty eight at the time. The more I spoke, the more color came back to Will's features and the more my family and others left us alone.

He was released a year and some odd months before the Outbreak while I remained. We had stopped speaking and I had slipped back into being mute. He was angry at me and had every right to be. I had tried to kill myself in the hospital before he left by swallowing bleach.

When you've been in one hospital for as long as I had, you tend to know where and when you can access the staff's cleaning products. I made the mistake of trying when Will was awake.

* * *

My guilty pleasure TV channel was Lifetime. Will had relented that day and pulled out a book on the Great Influenza outbreak of 1918 while I watched a movie on a teenager whose parents had been murdered. It followed the generic Lifetime movie plotline and I quickly lost interest in it. He hadn't complained about how loud it was. He just sat there and turned the pages of his book at random intervals.

I reached across and grabbed a thermos full of bleach mixed in water and uncapped it. The smell of the bleach hit me first and I hoped that Will wouldn't notice.

I managed to take a few sips and one medium size gulp before I started to cough. Will looked up from his book and I sobbed internally as I heard him inhale. The book dropped to the ground and he yanked the thermos out of my hands while he screamed out for help.

He kept asking me why even as he was held back and I was swarmed by hospital staff. I couldn't tell him because of the pain. He came back a few months later and sat with me until I broke down and told him everything.

I had nightmares every night. Over two hundred possible scenarios of how David's rampage could've ended and I died in every one. Other nightmares were of my family and friends rejecting me along with another reoccurring nightmare of freezing to death in the Vermont State forest. I had each one at random and sometimes a three in the same night. I was an inconvenience to everyone I had reasoned at that point, so what did it matter if I died?

He sat stone still and silent as I said that it didn't matter if I died. He was my best, and at this point, only friend and I had thought I'd lost him.

Will shook his head and wrapped his arms around me. It was the first of few times I can count that he cried.

I continued to be mute when I was finally released from the hospital. It had developed again but I was in an outpatient treatment program for it. My left shoulder and both legs hurt where I had been shot for a while at anything resembling the sound of a gun firing or a hatchet scraping. Will became a regular face in my house hold and stepped in after my younger brother Sammy was killed in a hunting accident by my dad's best friend. My dad couldn't function as a normal human being and when the Outbreak first started, he ate his own gun. Only my mother, Will and I were left.


	3. Chapter 3 Group

**Disclaimer- See previous chapter.**

**NOTE: I have re ordered the chapters. this used to be chapter 2 and is now chapter 3!**

* * *

Will stretched as he stood and his six foot frame protested the movement. He'd slept with his back against the Land Rover and with his arm wrapped around his sniper rifle. He'd managed to take down five Stiffs in succession a little after 3 a.m.

Tyr coughed and quickly covered his mouth with his dirty arm to stifle the noise. He looked to Will and then around the open area of their camp. Suzie bit her lip and packed their things as quietly as possible. She caught Will's eyes and nodded once to him. He knew what it meant. _Let's move_.

Judging by the sun, it was about 6 a.m. Will taught Tyr how to clean his gun and cleaned Suzie's in the back bed of the LR. They had scrounged through many cars and found clothes, bandages, and warm water. Will watched over them as the shuffled through the items and brought them back to the cars. Suzie had popped the trunk of the Fusion and re organized what Tyr threw in. With his vantage point on top of the trailer, Will had successfully taken down ten more Stiffs until he saw something moving faster.

"Suzie, Tyr" He shouted down to them as they locked the trunk, "Get in the trailer."

He waited until he heard the familiar _click_ of the trailer lock from the inside before he pressed his body firmly into the top of it. He would defend what them and what they had until his last breath. Will's gaze shifted back towards the horizon.

_9 a.m. now._

He exhaled slowly as a motorcycle passed by the Fusion followed by an RV and a small car with four people inside. Two adults and two kids he guessed as he slowly maneuvered so he could see the new group. Only Tyr and Suzie could hear his body weight onto of the trailer. He tensed at a loud hissing sound from the front of the RV. _Radiator hose maybe?_ He swallowed once to suppress a flashback of when he was shot in London. A few tears burned his eyes and the scar on his arm tingled. _Stop_.

Will's eyes followed the group and counted them for a half an hour. He counted ten in total and firmly clasped the barrel of his rifle. He hissed lowly as it scorched his hand from the warmth of the sunlight. It was loud enough to be heard by the group but was masked by something louder.

Growling.

Will froze and watched as five Stiffs grew into twenty in a matter of seconds. The group scrambled beneath cars and one older man mirrored his position on top of the RV. Cerulean eyes caught his shaking hand and his ears heard the butt of the rifle tap against the top of the trailer. His mind was already ahead of him in their warning system. One tap meant to stay and two if it was safe to come out.

His nose wrinkled at the stench as the last of the herd passed by. _Now all these people just need to stay underneath the cars… _

"Come on…" will huffed as he Army crawled to the edge of the trailer and readied his rifle just in case.

Just as he was about to pull away from the sight a girl's scream echoed across the highway and Will's trained eye followed the two Stiffs that had started to chase one of the children off the highway and into the woods. He got off one clean shot and took one down before one of the group's men ran after her.

Will tapped the top of the trailer twice and slid down the side ladder with the rifle situated over his shoulder. His sore hands grasped the bottom of the trailer door and pulled it up so they could come out. Just as he closed and relocked the door from the outside, he heard Tyr scream and start to beg. Not for himself, but for Suzie.

Hi heart filled his throat as he drew his hunting knife from his belt and made his way around the left side of the trailer. He sheathed it and ran to Suzie's side and pushed Tyr behind him. One man who looked like he lived in the Georgia woods his entire life held a crossbow inches from Suzie's face.

"She's not a Stiff." Will growled deeply and held the man's gaze until he lowered the crossbow.

Suzie turned on her heels and wrapped her arm around his neck. Tyr came out from behind Will with his knife draw and he glared daggers at the man once he noticed Suzie's form start to shiver.

"Follow me." He nodded back towards the RV and slung his crossbow back over his shoulder. "We haven't seen any survivors since Atlanta."

Will kept his arms wrapped around Suzie while Tyr stood guard for them. The group had them set up by the RV and refused to let them return to their cars. Their leader, Rick, and the man who almost killed Suzie (He didn't care to learn his name) went off into the woods to find the missing girl. They had allowed them to keep their guns and other weapons to assist if another herd came through. He did give them credit for the name they gave the infected; Walkers, it was ingenious. He almost wished he'd come up with it sooner.

He kept track of the time and guessed it was 3 p.m. by the time the two came back. They argued amongst themselves about who would stay and who would go to help cover more ground. Will glared at the hick the instant he moved towards them. He flinched but kept walking closer until he stood before them and held out his hand.

" 'm sorry I mistook her for a Walker." Will stared at the hand until he felt Suzie nod her head against his shoulder. "I was on edge." He still held his hand out although he now shifted a few times from foot to foot, "That's been the biggest herd we've seen so far..."

Will finally relented and shook the man's hand. He stood up and let go of Suzie long enough so Tyr could take his place and helped her to the steps of the RV. Dale, the eldest of the group, handed her a small cup of water and smiled to him. Will met his gaze but did not return it.

"We were almost at the CDC." Will cleared his throat "We saw it go up and I had to think of another plan for us."

Will watched as Rick approached him. He remained tense and ready to fight even as he shook the man's hand.

"Rick Grimes…"

"William Campbell." He shook it back out of common courtesy, "Just call me Will."

"We were at the CDC when it exploded." Will cocked his head to the side and Rick reaffirmed his statement with a nod.

"That only happens during a decontamination…" He paused, "Did they find any trace of a cure?"

"No," Rick paused as the hick left, "There was once scientist left trying to find a cure." Will grimaced as Rick cleared his throat. "He also told me that we are all infected."

Will was thankful for the few moments of silence between them. "I figured as much." He motioned to Tyr who had rested his head on Suzie's lap, "Tyr's parents were infected and I had to shoot them after they turned in front of him." He shook his head and sighed heavily. "We've been on the road for so long without seeing any survivors that are still…" He quickly ran his hands through his hair and leaned back against the RV, "Human.. is the only word I can think of."

Rick nodded and handed him a water bottle. "We need to go find Sophia…"

"I would help you," Will sighed and looked to Suzie again, "But I can't leave her."

A heavier sigh escaped Rick as the others began to head out, "Please come with us," He cracked his knuckles against his leg, "Dale, T-Dog and Carol will be here along with your boy to look after her."

Will continued to stare at his group until they both nodded. Suzie stood and handed him the rifle ammo she had grabbed from the trailer wall and placed it in his left hand. He allowed her to take his right and mouth "Thank you" before he followed Rick to join the search party.


End file.
